Boogeyman
by Mr Sinister
Summary: Tom Worthington, Betsy and Warren's bouncing blue toddler, needs a midnight snack, but ends up making a new friend. Or so he thinks...


**_Boogeyman_**

It was two-thirty in the morning, and Tom Worthington was thirsty.

Pushing himself out of bed, he wandered over to where Mummy and Daddy were sleeping, and tugged gently on Mummy's arm, which was hanging out from under the duvet that she and Daddy shared. Blearily, Mummy raised her head and asked "Yes, sweetheart?"

"I'm thirsty, Mummy," Tom said. "Can you get me some water?"

"Of course, darling – just let Mummy wake up a little first, all right?" Mummy replied, pulling back her half of the duvet and leaving Daddy to sleep. Then she walked over to where her dressing gown was hanging, put it on and tied the strings at the front, before holding out her hand and smiling tiredly. "Come on, trouble."

Tom took her hand and tried to keep up with her as she walked down the big staircase towards the mansion's kitchen, taking two or three steps to Mummy's one, before he pointed to the banister and asked "Can I slide down that, please, Mummy?"

Mummy shook her head. "I'm afraid not, sweetheart. It's dangerous."

Tom pushed his lower lip out indignantly. "'S not fair," he grumbled, dragging his feet deliberately. "Unc' Bobby does it."

"Yes, well, Uncle Bobby's a big boy," Mummy replied with a small smile. "And he can take a fall a lot better than you can, my darling. Ask him to teach you how to do it when you're a bit older, all right?" Tom didn't like that much more than Mummy telling him not to do it, but it was something, at least. He decided he would ask Uncle Bobby to teach him the next morning, if Uncle Bobby wasn't off somewhere with the Fright Screen. Tom didn't know what that was, but he didn't think it could be anything good. Maybe he would ask Auntie Emma about it, because she was always with Uncle Bobby, although he wasn't altogether sure she'd like that – Auntie Emma didn't seem to like very much at all. She'd hated it when he'd tried to give her a flower, and had said some words that Mummy had assured him were not to be repeated, even when you were with your friends.

Mummy and Auntie Emma had shouted at each other a lot that day. Tom decided that asking Auntie Emma anything was probably a bad idea. Perhaps Uncle Hank would like to talk to him a bit more – Uncle Hank loved to talk a lot, Tom had noticed, and when Tom's big sister Becca was around, Uncle Hank seemed to talk even more. Tom often wondered if Becca was Uncle Hank's best friend, like Mummy and Daddy were best friends. But then what did that make Auntie Trish, if Becca was Hank's best friend? Tom didn't know. Grown-ups were funny, he decided firmly.

"Here we are," Mummy said, pushing open the door to the kitchen and leading Tom in. Picking him up with both hands, Mummy put him on the nearest chair around the kitchen table. "Wait a second, Tom – you'll have your water in a flash. Cross my heart." She winked at him and then kissed him on the forehead, before walking quickly over to the cupboard above the work surface and pulling out two glasses. "I'll have some water as well, I think. It's thirsty work looking after you, you know."

Tom giggled. Grown-ups were all funny, but Mummy was the funniest. "Can I have some Lucky Charms as well, Mummy?" he asked, suddenly feeling very hungry. Mummy turned around then, and tipped her head slightly to one side.

"I think you forgot something. What's the magic word?" she asked, putting her hands on her hips.

"Um… please?" Tom asked hopefully, which made Mummy smile.

"That's right – good boy, you're learning. Yes, you can have some Lucky Charms."

"Yay!" Tom cried, and ran quickly over to the cereal cupboard, opening it and pulling out a box of his favourite breakfast, while Mummy found his Donald Duck bowl and spoon. Lucky Charms were Uncle Bobby's favourite cereal too, and so Tom often had to thumb-wrestle Uncle Bobby to decide who got their breakfast first. He was just about to pour a big heap into his bowl when Mummy gently took the box out of his hands.

"Not too much, darling," she said firmly, before he could protest, "or you won't get back to sleep. Here – I'll pour you some, all right? Then you can have some more at your proper breakfast time." She leant forwards and shook out a small amount of cereal before splashing it with plenty of milk.

Tom scowled. "'Kay," he said in a soft, annoyed voice. He'd had this argument before, so he knew that if he said anything else, Mummy wouldn't let him play in the Manger Doom for a whole week. Tom liked it in there, because it meant he could play Harry Potter and see all the magic actually happening. He liked it when Mummy read the books to him, too, but he liked it even more when he could play the stories. He had almost as much fun doing that as he did with Uncle Hank when they were playing Frisbee or horsey in the garden – Tom loved sitting on Hank's shoulders while Hank ran around the garden on all fours.

Picking up his spoon, Tom tucked into his Lucky Charms, while Mummy sat down next to him and ate a banana. She offered him a bite, but Tom shook his head. Mummy and Daddy liked funny things.

Mummy waited patiently while he ate his cereal, reading the paper from the morning before as she did so, and then lifted him off his chair before she put his bowl and spoon in the sink. "All finished?" she asked. Tom nodded, and Mummy smiled. "Time to get back to bed, then." She took Tom by the hand and led him back upstairs, while Tom looked at the banisters and decided even more firmly that he'd have to ask Uncle Bobby to teach him how to slide down them. When he and Mummy had got back to their room, Mummy lifted Tom back into his bed and pulled the covers back over him, brushing his face with her lips. "Good night, trouble."

Tom smiled back at Mummy, and closed his eyes.

He hadn't been asleep for very long when he heard a voice calling to him. _Wake up, Thomas,_ it said softly. Tom opened his eyes and looked around, wondering if it had been Mummy calling to him with her head-voice, but when he looked over to where she was lying, Mummy was fast asleep again. Tom rubbed his eyes and was about to go back to sleep when he saw that there was somebody else in the room other than Mummy and Daddy. It was a very thin boy with extremely pale skin and intense blue eyes. Tom hadn't seen this person before, so he got out of bed and walked over to the boy so that he could say hello. Tom knew that Mummy and Daddy always told him never to talk to strangers – but if this boy was in their house, he couldn't _really_ be a stranger, could he?

"'lo," he said quietly, smiling as widely as he could. "'M Tom. Have you lost your mummy and daddy?" The boy smiled back at him.

"Hello, Thomas. My name is Nathan – I'm a friend of your mother and father. Would you like to play a game with me?" Tom liked the sound of that. He loved games, so he nodded vigorously. The boy's smile widened, and he offered Tom his hand. "Excellent. Come with me, and we can begin the game." He led Tom out of the bedroom and into another corridor.

Tom recognised this as the way to Becca and Uncle Sam's room, so he said "Are we going to play with Becca?"

The boy looked at him and smiled again. "In a… manner of speaking, yes. Quickly now, Thomas, or we won't get to play at all."

Tom thought for a second, and then he said "Can I go and get Mummy? She likes playing with Becca and Sam."

"No!" the boy said sharply, his blue eyes flashing for a moment or two, before he took a deep breath and smiled again. "No. Let's just keep this between the two of us, all right?"

"'Kay," Tom replied, and walked on after the other little boy wondering what kind of game they were going to play. He hoped it would be something like _Donkey Konga­_ – he loved that game, and especially loved using the funny controller to make all kinds of sounds – or maybe even _Grand Theft Auto_­. Mummy and Daddy wouldn't let him play that game because they said it was too rough for him, but that just made him want to play it even more. Up until now he hadn't been allowed, and all of Mummy's friends had been told about him not being allowed to play it, so he couldn't get them to help him. Even Uncle Bobby wouldn't lend him a hand, and that was a pretty big thing – if Uncle Bobby didn't want him playing it, then it must be really bad.

The two boys arrived at the door to Becca and Sam's room, and Tom reached up and tugged on the handle so that it opened quietly. Tom knew it was squeaky, so he made sure to do it as slowly as possible – he didn't want to wake Becca and Sam up before he could surprise them. When he and Nathan were inside, he started to run at the bed so that he could jump on it and wake his big sister up, but Nathan grabbed his arm and stopped him, shaking his head as he did so.

"No," he said firmly. "Leave them alone. We're going to play with your niece today."

Tom looked at the crib that his niece was sleeping in, and wondered what kind of fun he could have with Hannah – she was too small to play catch, and she didn't really do a lot except sleep. "Why?" he asked, genuinely puzzled.

Nathan scowled. "She's important to me," he muttered darkly, before he walked over to the crib and lifted Hannah out with both hands. Tom waited for her to start screaming, but she never did, which confused him a little. Hannah was usually the first to start crying if she didn't like something, after all. "Help me, Thomas," Nathan said as he laid Hannah out onto the floor of the bedroom. "Hold her for me."

"'Kay," Tom said, and put his small blue hands around the middle of Hannah's furry body. He liked Hannah's fur – it reminded him of Uncle Hank and Uncle Kurt. He'd have preferred it if it was blue like theirs, but gold was good as well, he thought. While he was holding Hannah, Nathan reached into a pocket and took out something that looked like one of Uncle Hank's special tools from his private room down underground. It looked very sharp, and so Tom didn't want Nathan to hurt Hannah with it. "Unc' Hank never uses those on real people," he said firmly, thinking that Nathan would stop if he mentioned Uncle Hank.

Instead, Nathan just knelt down beside Hannah and started to cut away some of her hair with his special tool. "I'm not hurting her," he explained. "I'm just taking some of her fur so I can… look at it later. She won't miss any of it." Then, he reached into another pocket and took out a small glass tube, just like the ones that Uncle Hank had in his special room. Tom wondered if Nathan had stolen them, and if he had, that was bad, and he'd have to tell somebody about it later. After all, Mummy and Daddy always told him to tell them about bad things, even if it was a friend who was doing them. Before he could think any more on that, Nathan had put the tube away and was reaching for something else – a sharp, pointy needle with a plastic tube attached to it.

Tom didn't like needles, because they hurt (he'd hated it when Uncle Hank had given him some things he called "vaccines", and had cried for ages until Mummy had given him a bowl of sweets to cheer him up). And he was sure that this would hurt Hannah, so he said "Don't do that" in as strong a voice as he could. Nathan gave him a crooked smile.

"Thank you for your concern, Thomas, but this won't hurt her. Watch." And then he pushed the needle into Hannah's arm. She squirmed a bit, but didn't wake up. "See?" Then he pulled the end of the tube, and Tom saw blood flowing into it. When it was full up, Nathan took the tube off and quickly took another two tubes of blood, which he put into a special case that he had taken from his pocket.

Tom was surprised – he had expected that Hannah would scream when Nathan had pushed the needle into her, but she hadn't made a sound. Perhaps needles weren't as bad as he'd thought, if she wasn't even bothered enough about them to wake up. Still, this didn't seem like the sort of game that he'd expected they were going to play, so he said "Can we do something else now? 'M bored."

"I'm nearly finished, Thomas," Nathan said through clenched teeth. He sounded like Auntie Emma when she and Uncle Bobby had had to baby-sit him, Tom thought. "Just hold her a little while longer, all right?" Then, he took his special tool and gently scraped it across Hannah's palm, taking a small piece of dead skin off and then placing it in another small glass tube. When he'd done that, he looked up at Tom and smiled. "There. All finished. Shall we go and play something else now?"

Tom grinned. "_Donkey Konga_!" he exclaimed happily, and quickly led Nathan out of Becca and Sam's room towards the main staircase, jumping down the stairs two at a time until he got to the bottom, and then led Nathan to the room where Uncle Bobby kept his special games machine. He picked up the box that the game was kept in, took it out carefully, and then put it in the machine before picking up the bongos and getting ready to play. "This is fun," he told Nathan excitedly.

Nathan raised an eyebrow. Tom thought he looked like Uncle Hank when he was reading the paper in the morning. "I'm sure it is," Nathan said. "Why don't you start, and I'll… watch you, all right?"

"'Kay," Tom agreed. He didn't really want to go second, so this was okay with him. He pressed a few buttons and started a new game, waiting for Nathan to sit beside him so he could watch. "Watch this!" He felt Nathan sit down on the couch beside him, and then began to play. He got so absorbed in it that he forgot to talk to Nathan, so he turned to look at his new friend – and found that he'd vanished. After about half an hour of looking for him, Tom decided that he'd better get back to bed before Mummy found him and told him off…

* * *

The next morning, Tom woke up at about nine o'clock and wandered downstairs to the kitchen, where he found Mummy and Daddy eating breakfast together with Auntie Jean and Uncle Scott. Uncle Bobby and Uncle Hank were there too, but Auntie Emma and Auntie Trish seemed to be somewhere else.

"Hey, little man," Uncle Bobby said. "Good to see you finally joined us. Have a good night's sleep?"

"Yes, Unc' Bobby," Tom replied, beaming. "I had some Lucky Charms too."

"Your mommy told us all about that," Auntie Jean said, smiling back at him. "She thought you'd never get back to sleep if you had them, but I guess she was wrong, wasn't she?"

"I'm never wrong," Mummy interrupted, making Tom laugh. "Tom knows that – don't you, trouble?"

Tom giggled. "You're funny, Mummy."

Mummy rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm glad somebody finds me amusing," she said, looking at Daddy with an expression Tom had often seen her use when she wanted to get her own way.

Daddy stuck his tongue out at Mummy, and took a sip of his orange juice. "You're a riot, honey." Then he looked over at Tom and said in a low tone "Don't listen to her, son, she's just bitter because I'm funnier than she is."

"No you aren't, Daddy!" Tom said indignantly. "Mummy's lots funnier than you."

"He shoots, he scores," Uncle Bobby laughed, before sipping some of his milk and taking a bite out of his giant chocolate-chip cookie. "Out of the mouths of babes…"

"It would seem to me, Warren," Uncle Hank began, "that your son has an altogether better appreciation of wit than you do – which makes me wonder whether you are in fact his father, or if it was your evil twin?"

Daddy made a face. "Hank, I'd tell you all about it, but my son is sat right there. He's not old enough to hear that kind of talk."

Tom ignored that. Uncle Hank, Uncle Bobby and Daddy often talked like that, so it wasn't really anything new. Instead, he reached up with one small blue hand and tugged gently on the sleeve of Mummy's silk dressing gown, making Mummy look down at him with her soft blue eyes. "Can we have Nathan over to stay, Mummy?" he asked.

"I'm afraid we don't know where Uncle Nathan is at the moment, sweetheart," Mummy said. Tom frowned. How could grown-ups be so dense?

"Not _Table_, Mummy," he told her, pushing his bottom lip out a bit and trying to make them see how silly they were being. "_Nathan._"

"We don't know where your other Uncle Nate is, either, darling," Mummy said, looking puzzled. "You might have to ask your big sister about him. He usually talks to her more than anyone else, remember?"

Tom's frown deepened a bit. This was silly. "Don't mean him. _Nathan._"

"I'm sorry, Tom, but I still don't know who you mean," Mummy replied. "Did you meet Nathan somewhere yesterday?"

"He came to play last night," Tom said. "We went and saw Hannah, and he took some of her fur to take home. We played _Donkey Konga_ and then he went home." Mummy's face suddenly went very white, and she put one hand over her mouth. Tom hadn't seen her that colour before, and that concerned him. "Are you all right, Mummy?" he asked.

Mummy nodded, and bent closer to him. "I want you to think very carefully about this, darling," she said, grasping him gently by both shoulders. "What did this Nathan look like?"

"He had blue eyes, and white skin. He looked like Casper the Toast," Tom said. "We had fun. Can he come and play again soon?"

Mummy looked at Daddy, and the rest of the grown-ups. "I think we have a problem. Sinister was here last night, and he took some of my grand-daughter's DNA." Tom didn't know who that meant, but he hoped that it wouldn't mean he couldn't see Nathan again.

He'd liked playing with Nathan. It had been fun.


End file.
